Trust, Democracy, and Hygiene Theatre: Taiwan’s Evasion of the Pandemic

Abstract Taiwan’s record of preventing infections and deaths from COVID-19 outshines that of almost every other nation, far outstripping the performance of the US, all European countries, and almost all Asian countries. Yet Taiwan is the nation closest to Wuhan, font of the pandemic. Equally importantly, Taiwan’s public health achievement has occurred without the government dictates such as business and residential lockdowns that have aroused controversy and caused economic and psychological distress around the globe. This essay relates the story of Taiwan’s actions during the crucial early months of 2020 and explores the factors—historical, geographical, legal, institutional, strategic, and cultural—accounting for Taiwan’s remarkable success. Prominent among those factors are the legal and institutional infrastructure of preparedness that Taiwan constructed following its unhappy experience with the 2003 SARS outbreak, and the prompt and decisive measures taken upon discovery of the Wuhan outbreak on 31 December 2019. A dialogue between the judiciary and the legislative and executive branches of government following the SARS episode enabled the infrastructure of preparedness to be created through a process consonant with democratic government, respecting principles of individual liberty and fairness. Risk communication techniques were skilfully employed to build public trust in expert advice about measures for infection prevention. Persuasion, not compulsion, was the norm. Cultural factors including customary acceptance of mask-wearing and authoritative advice, and perhaps a high level of risk-aversity, also played an important part. Taiwan’s pandemic control policies have drawn criticism of government overreach. Some recommendations, such as for outdoor masking, bear little rational relation to infection prevention and are best characterized as mere “hygiene theatre.” Nevertheless, early-2020 government measures received a high level of public approval. Taiwan’s successful response to the pandemic illustrates the nation’s nature: a disciplined democracy.